The Influence of Gender and Ethnicity on the Use of ICT in Higher Education A Case of Arts and Social Sciences Students in Universiti Malaya

This thesis titled The Influence of Gender and Ethnicity on the use of ICT in Higher Education A Case of Arts and Social Sciences Students in Universiti Malaya by ANIMESH S.. ABSTRACT RA

A Case of Arts and Social Sciences Students in Universiti Malaya

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Center for International Studies of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Animesh S Rathore November 2008

© 2008 Animesh S Rathore All Rights Reserved

This thesis titled The Influence of Gender and Ethnicity on the use of ICT in Higher Education

A Case of Arts and Social Sciences Students in Universiti Malaya

by ANIMESH S RATHORE

has been approved for the Center for International Studies by

Drew O McDaniel Professor, School of Media Arts & Studies

Gene Ammarell Director, Southeast Asian Studies

Daniel Weiner Executive Director, Center for International Studies

ABSTRACT RATHORE, ANIMESH S., M.A., November 2008, Southeast Asian Studies

The Influence of Gender and Ethnicity on the use of ICT in Higher Education

A Case of Arts and Social Sciences Students in Universiti Malaya (125 pp.)

Director of Thesis: Drew O McDaniel

While most studies on ICT use among students have typically focused on students

in the field of science and technology, this study focuses on a group that has seldom been

studied for its ICT use—students in Arts and Social Sciences Based on a survey of 32

students conducted at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Universiti Malaya during

December 2006, this study examines the relationships among gender, ethnicity, and

students’ ICT use The findings of this study suggest that the female students spent

significantly more time using ICT for study purposes than males The interviews with

faculty members revealed that female students spent more time on studies and were less

likely to cheat or plagiarize However, the study found no such difference between

Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra students

Approved: _

Drew O McDaniel Professor, School of Media Arts & Studies

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I still remember the summer of 1991, when my mother took a major decision to

go back to school after a gap of 25 years Her determination was so strong that despite

some resistance from my brothers and relatives, she pursued her degree in education and

started working as a primary school teacher at the same school in India where my father

had served as a principal for eight years before his demise in January 1991 If it was not

for the hard work my mother had put in raising my sister and myself, I would certainly

not be able to pursue the academic career I have now My mother’s sacrifices and

determination to keep standing in a conventionally patriarchal society has always

motivated me to study gender development across the developing world I owe almost

everything I have today to her dedication and perseverance

I sincerely wish to thank all those who extended help and support in different

ways and made it possible for me to complete this thesis I am grateful to the Center for

International Studies at Ohio University for allowing me to pursue my research interest in

Malaysia and awarding me the prestigious Southeast Asian Studies Research Travel

Grant that enabled me to travel to Malaysia for my fieldwork I am thankful to the

International Institute of Public Policy and Management (INPUMA) at Universiti Malaya

for accepting me as a visiting scholar and providing the necessary support during the data

collection I am also thankful to the Institutional Review Board at Ohio University for

being so prompt in approving my research plan and subsequent revisions

Personally, I wish to thank Dr Sharifah M Alhabshi (Deputy Director,

INPUMA), Mr Hirman Awang (Asst Registrar, INPUMA), Ms Vigneshree King (Asst

Registrar, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) and other administrative staff at Universiti

Malaya Among the faculty members, I would like to thank Dr Joseph M Fernando

(History), Dr Shanthi Thambiah (Gender Studies), Dr Carol E Leon (English), Dr Lim

Chee Seng (English), and Mr Thirunaukarasu Subramaniam (South East Asian Studies)

for sharing their valuable insights with me

At Ohio University, I would like to thank Prof Mohamad Abu Bakar (the

2005-07 Tun Abdul Razak Chair from Department of International and Strategic Studies,

Universiti Malaya), Dr Gene Ammarell (Director, Southeast Asian Studies), Dr Liren

Zheng (Curator and Bibliographer, Chinese Studies, Cornell University Library), and

especially Dr Haley Duschinski (Sociology and Anthropology) for their useful inputs

and encouragement at different times I am thankful to Ms Karla Schneider and the other

staff at the Center for International Studies for always being so supportive I am also

thankful to my family and all my friends and colleagues at Ohio who helped me at

several occasions in different ways

Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards my advisor Dr

Drew McDaniel (Media Arts and Studies) for being an immense source of inspiration,

valuable guidance, constructive criticism, as well as unconditional support at the right

times during the course of this thesis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract 3 

Acknowledgments 4 

List of Tables 9 

List of Figures 10 

Chapter 1: Introduction 11 

Aim 21 

Research Questions 21 

Chapter 2: Review of Literature 23 

ICT, Gender, and Ethnicity in Higher Education 23 

ICT, Gender, Ethnicity, and Higher Education in Malaysia 32 

Summary 41 

Chapter 3: Malaysia: A Background 43 

Demography 43 

Ethnic Groups in Malaysia 43 

The Malays 44 

The Chinese 45 

The Indians 48 

Ethnic Integration and Politics in Malaysia 51 

The New Economic Policy 55 

Malaysia’s Technological Growth 60 

Gender and Development in Malaysian Context 63 

Women in Colonial Economy 64 

Gender across Ethnic Groups 66 

Women and Politics 66 

Women in the New Economy 68 

Gender Development in Malaysia: Key Challenges 70 

Summary 71 

Chapter 4: Research Methodology 73 

Method 74 

Proxies 74 

Survey Tool 75 

Sampling 79 

About Universiti Malaya 81 

About the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 82 

PTM: Centre for IT 83 

Analysis 83 

Summary 84 

Chapter 5: Research Findings 85 

Testing the Hypotheses 85 

Other Findings 91 

Chapter 6: Discussion And Conclusions 99 

Discussion 99 

Conclusion 107 

Limitations & Recommendations 110 

References 111 

Appendix A: Questionnaire 122 

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1: Mean of total weekly hours spent on computer (including Internet) for

studies by ethnicity 86

Table 2: Mean of total weekly hours spent on computer (including Internet) for studies by gender 86

Table 3: Mean of total weekly hours spent on studies by gender 86

Table 4: Mean of total weekly hours spent on studies by ethnicity 88

Table 5: Computer access at home across Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra students 88

Table 6: Computer access at home across female and male students 88

Table 7: Self-reported level of computer use across Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra students 90

Table 8: Self-reported level of Computer Use across female and male students 90

Table 9: Willingness to spend on ICT across Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra students 92

Table 10: Willingness to spend on ICT across female and male students 92

Table 11: Difficulty in computer access across Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra students 92

Table 12: Difficulty in computer access across female and male students 93

Table 13: Difficulty in using computer across Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra students 93

Table 14: Difficulty in using computer across female and male students 94

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1: The MSC Malaysia Vision 62

Figure 2: Opinion on computer being helpful in studies (by ethnicity) 95

Figure 3: Opinion on computer being helpful in studies (by gender) 95

Figure 4: Opinion on computer often being a cause of frustration (by ethnicity) 96

Figure 5: Opinion on computer often being a cause of frustration (by gender) 96

Figure 6: Opinion on Internet often being a cause of frustration (by ethnicity) 97

Figure 7: Opinion on Internet often being a cause of frustration (by gender) 97

Figure 8: Opinion on Internet being helpful in academic work (by ethnicity) 98

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 2002, after finishing my graduate program in Development

Communication, I received a unique opportunity to work on a study titled ‘Engendering

ICT’ (Information and Communication Technology) as a research associate at the Indian

Institute of Management, Ahmedabad This was my first experience of researching

socio-cultural issues from a gender perspective, which was both challenging as well as

interesting for me I learned about the immense potential of ICTs and even simple

technologies in improving the status of women in society The global nature of the

project made me aware of the importance of socio-cultural factors influencing the use of

ICTs by women across different regions

Later, between November 2003 and August 2005, I became involved in

web-publishing an online newsletter titled ‘Information Technology in Developing Countries’

It was during this time that I learned about the tremendous ICT development across the

Southeast Asian region, especially Malaysia I found that the dispersion of technology

has been highly uneven around the world While many people in the developed world

appeared to take the availability of computer and the Internet for granted as they had easy

access, the people in a number of developing countries who considered these

technologies as substantial means for their socio-economic advancement had limited ICT

access However, some of the post-colonial developing countries, like Malaysia, had been

able to demonstrate a substantial socio-economic growth as well as had the ability to

benefit from the advent of IT (Information Technology) During my graduate studies at

Ohio University in 2005-06, I became further interested in Malaysia due to a variety of

reasons, including (but definitely not limited to) its rich wildlife and natural resources,

rapid economic and technological growth, and most importantly its cultural diversity

It was my understanding that for any country or government, education was one

of the primary means of socio-economic development, especially for the economically

disadvantaged or marginalized groups Based on my understanding and personal

experiences, I became curious about how the education system in Malaysia had

responded to the technological advancements during the past two decades and how it

related to the overall gender and ethnic development in the country For me, one way of

assessing this was to explore the extent to which the college students with different

gender and ethnic backgrounds used computer and Internet in their academic work?

Through this research study, I intended to seek an answer to my question

The introduction and propagation of ICTs had clearly been receiving a lot of

attention across various fields the world over The field of education, too, had been trying

to benefit from the potential of the new technology in different parts of the world

However, for some, there was a little evidence of ICT being deployed in the field of

education as extensively as it had been in some other fields, such as banking Oliver

noted:

If one was to compare such fields as medicine, tourism, travel, business, law,

banking, engineering and architecture, the impact of ICT across the past two or

three decades has been enormous The way these fields operate today is vastly

different from the ways they operated in the past But when one looks at

education, there seems to have been an uncanny lack of influence and far less

change than other fields have experienced (Oliver, 2002, p 1)

Thus, I got further interested in knowing what was happening in a country like

Malaysia where education is indeed an important part of the overall IT strategy I became

interested in seeing how female students were making use of the technology (wherever

available) for their educational advancement I also found that while most studies on the

use of ICTs so far had primarily focused either on the students in pure sciences or in the

fields that typically involved the use of ICTs, such as IT Management, there was almost

no accessible literature that focused on Arts and Social Sciences students Thus, in this

study, I planned to focus on the discipline of Arts and Social Sciences (an otherwise less

studied group) for its use of ICT

As mentioned earlier, I had been most interested in the cultural diversity aspect of

Malaysia, something that was quite visible in my home country India as well The

Malaysian population could be broadly divided into two major groups, namely,

Bumiputra (Malay word for “son of the earth”) and non-Bumiputra The Bumiputra

included Malays and indigenous peoples from the Peninsula, Sabah, and Sarawak The

non-Bumiputra included ethnic Chinese, Indians (primarily of Tamil origin), and other

groups, such as Ceylonese Tamils (from Sri Lanka) Among the non-Bumiputra, who

formed roughly around 35 percent of Malaysia’s total population in 2004, the Chinese

were the largest ethnic group, as they formed almost 24 percent of the country’s

population at the time (Jabatan Perangkaan Malaysia, 2004a, p 37) Pan (2006) reported

that Southeast Asia had the highest number of overseas Chinese immigrants in the world

and within Southeast Asia, Malaysia had the largest number of ethnic Chinese (over four

million) By 2004, the number of ethnic Chinese had crossed the six million mark

(Jabatan Perangkaan Malaysia, 2004a, p 37) The Chinese were mostly based in

urban-centers, especially Kuala Lumpur, and had been involved in various economic activities

(Pan, 2006)

With a population of over 1.8 million or seven percent of Malaysia’s total

population in 2004, the Indians formed the second largest non-Bumiputera ethnic group

in the country (Jabatan Perangkaan Malaysia, 2004a, p 37) Most of the ethnic Indians

were brought to Malaya primarily as rubber-plantation workers and as civil-servants by

the British during the colonial rule, many of whom remained in majority numbers near

the former plantations areas (also known as the rubber-zones) and also as minorities at

urban centers like Kuala Lumpur, and Melaka—an old port city in current day Malaysia

famous for its significant trade and strategic location from the earlier times (Arasaratnam,

1979 & Sandhu, 1993) Although an early migration of these groups was evident, the

presence of the Chinese and the Indians in large numbers in recent times was mainly a

result of British colonization of Malaya and the Straits Settlements (early territories of the

British East India Company in the Southeast Asian region including Penang, Melaka,

modern day Singapore, and the islands of Dinding and Province Wellesley)and the

increased demands for labor on rubber plantations as well as tin mines during the colonial

era (between the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries) Also, there were “push” factors

within China and “pull” factors within Malaya that encouraged many Chinese men to

migrate (Suryadinata, 1997, p 9)

Interestingly, the role of Chinese in the Malayan economy during the British

colonial period was much more varied and widespread than either of the native Malays or

Indians, who were primarily involved in agriculture, rubber plantation, and

administration to some extent The Chinese were involved in a host of activities ranging

from tin mining, transportation, food processing, rubber production, and urban jobs (Pan,

2006) The unequal demographic composition of Malaya and the strategic importance of

Chinese, who had sound knowledge of local markets and labor, enabled the Chinese to

act as a strong socio-political force as well The economic opportunities in the new Straits

Settlements, thus, enabled the Chinese to take the top spot in the social structure under

the British, while the Malays and the Indians followed

Even after thirteen years of independence from the British, the Malaysian

economy in 1970 was still dominated by the British companies and expatriates (63.3

percent) followed by the Chinese (27.2 percent), with a meager 2.4 percent as the Malay

share (Pan, 1998) Although the British still dominated the economy, the opportunities

for the Chinese to prosper in the new economy were ample According to Munro-Kua:

At independence, in 1957, Malaya stood second only to Japan in terms of

economic development although it can be argued that it had the resources

capability to be ahead of the other Non Industrialized Countries (Munro-Kua,

1996, p 1)

The Chinese were ideally placed to benefit from this situation This continued domination

of Malaysian economy by the Chinese intensified the tension across the Chinese and the

native (Malay) population and contributed substantially towards the mass rioting against

the Chinese on May 13, 1969 (Sandhu, 1993; and Pan, 1998) Following the 1969 riots,

the Malaysian government deployed the New Economic Policy (NEP) to end poverty and

to strike some balance across different ethnic groups Munro-Kua further noted:

The New Economic Policy was introduced through the Second Malaysian Plan

(1971-76) as a strategy to increase Malay participation in the economy UMNO

(the dominant political party in Malaysia) claimed this was to resolve the alleged

root cause of the 1969 riots, seen as being derived from too much accommodation

to non-Malays which had in turn fostered resentment among the Malays

(Munro-Kua, 1996, p 62)

The steps undertaken within this policy primarily focused on improving the status

of Bumiputra and included steps such as expansion of Bumiputra share ownership and

employment in various sectors of the economy including various forms of trade (Pan,

1998) Although the Bumiputra included Malays and other indigenous groups, such as the

Kadazans, the government reportedly seemed to be biased towards the Malays more than

others In any case, these efforts seemed to have little impact on the problems of

lower-income Malay peasants as well as other indigenous groups in rural areas (Fenton, 1999,

p 148) Moreover:

the granting of special privileges to Malays has been opposed in the past by

non-Malays such as Chinese and Indians However, since the May 13th incident, the

government has made it illegal for people to raise these issues as they are

considered to be sensitive (Othman, 1983, p 47)

While the disparities existent in the market at the time of 1969 riots eventually started

reducing and the Malay share increased almost ten-fold from 2.4 to over 20 percent by

the 1990s, it could not surpass the then increasing Chinese share (of almost 45 percent)

(Pan, 1998) The government claimed that those improvements were a result of the NEP,

but several authors, including Jomo (1994 & 2003), had argued that the pro-Bumiputra

aspect of the NEP had little to do with the phenomenal economic and technological

developments in Malaysia during the past decades

Over a period of time, especially during Mahathir Mohamad’s leadership, the

pro-Bumiputra aspect was not emphasized as much as Malaysia’s overall socio-economic

progress within the NEP (Jomo, 1994) In 1991, Mahathir delivered his famous speech

“Malaysia: The Way Forward” and declared “Vision 2020”—a strategy to attain the

status of a developed country by the year 2020 (Jomo, 1994, p 51) One of the key

objectives of this vision was to make Malaysia “a scientific, progressive, innovative and

forward-looking society” by the year 2020 (Jomo, 1994, p 52) Keeping in line with this

progressive agenda and to enhance country’s potential to gain from the IT boom

Malaysia launched a large-scale IT plan during the mid-1990s The project started with

the establishment of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), which included a physical

location as well as a set of policies aimed at making Malaysia a “knowledge-based

economy” through the means of ICTs by 2020 (McDaniel, 2002, p 94)

One of the seven key MSC policies had been to promote the use of ICTs in

education at various levels For instance, at the institutions of primary education, an effort

called “Smart School” had been initiated (MSC, 2007) Similarly, it was apparent that the

institutes of higher (especially technical) education had also been receiving growing

attention, and ICTs were becoming an integral part of the higher education system in

Malaysia However, for some researchers, such as Kamogawa (2003), there was a need to

re-conceptualize the MSC initiative in order to increase female participation in technical

education in Malaysia during the recent times There was clearly some disparity between

Kamogawa’s argument and Yong & Ng’s (1999) account in which the percentage of

women in IT education programs was fairly high in the early 1990s In fact, “women

comprised 51.4 percent of total enrollment in the IT field in the seven local universities

for the 1990-1 academic year” (Yong & Ng, 1999, p 146) This raised a question of

whether or not the implementation of MSC was providing a favorable environment in

terms of increasing or even maintaining the number of female students in IT fields,

although IT was only one of the many areas within the field of technical education

Just like the economic development or the dispersion of technology, the gender

development also appeared to be highly uneven across different parts of the world

Although there had been various examples of prominent woman leaders across the

developing world, the overall socio-cultural status of women across most developing

societies continued to be secondary to men due to their (societies’) patriarchal roots

Things had changed, and were continuously changing, from a gender perspective from

time to time and with different stages of development in a society, but these changes

often appeared to be slow, made a weak impact in the rural regions, and were usually not

radical For instance, according to UNESCO:

…despite major overall expansion in student enrolments in recent years, access

and participation, especially for women, non-urban populations and members of

minority groups remain a problem in the region (Asia) (UNESCO, 2003, p.19)

It, thus, seemed quite possible that the disparity reported by Kamogawa might

perhaps be visible in an ethnic context, too As Mohamad noted, Malays understood the

value of education through the teachings of Quran, but were worried about the “education

provided in schools and institutions of higher learning inculcate new values which are not

suitable for the Malays” (1987, p 18) This resistance, according to Mohamad,

contributed towards the poor performance of Malays in technical courses as well as in the

job market Mohamad (1987) also reported that the conventional Islamic education

system did not provide much scope for potential scientists or mathematicians However,

during the past few decades, the government had made substantial efforts towards

overcoming this issue For instance, the higher education (technical courses in particular)

for the Bumiputra had been subsidized as a result of a pro-Bumiputra policy structure

Moreover, they could also apply for funding for overseas education (Hassan, 2001, p

13)

As far as more recent studies on ethnicity in Malaysia were concerned, Zainab

Nordin had conducted a study in 1997 on the attitude of government employees across all

the ministries in Malaysia towards the MSC effort (McDaniel, 2002) Besides many other

interesting findings, the study results indicated that there were “striking differences

among Malaysian ethnic groups in their technical capabilities” (cited in McDaniel, 2002,

p 98) That is, only about 18 percent of Malays and 22 percent of the Indians were

experts or were very familiar with computers in terms of their skills, as opposed to 46

percent of the Chinese employees (cited in McDaniel, 2002, p 98) However, in light of

the pro-Bumiputra policy environment discussed earlier (Munro-Kua, 1996 and Hassan

2001), it could be argued that this trend might not be similar across the university level

Arts and Social Sciences students in the year 2006 Likewise, I would argue that

Kamogawa’s (2003) study that focused on technical education and showed low female

participation was perhaps only reflective of the fact that the participation of female

students in technical education was low, and not that the female students overall were not

making use of the available technology in their education (especially in the field of Arts

and Social Sciences)

A study carried in Israel by Soker (2005) focused on ICT, gender as well as

ethnicity The survey looked at ICT use in an Open University environment over a period

of seven years and found a significant gap between male and female users However,

there had been no such studies conducted in Malaysia that focused on ethnicity, gender,

higher education, as well as ICT, while focusing on Arts and Social Sciences’ students

In sum, Malaysia appeared to be a fascinating ground to explore the relationship

between ethnicity and ICT use in higher education Also, the issue of gender equality

across different ethnic groups in Malaysia offered sufficient scope for a detailed inquiry,

and I was really interested in studying how female students from diverse cultural

backgrounds would perceive the ICTs and their potential in their educational as well as

long-term advancement As the MSC had been implemented for over a decade, I felt it

was an apt time to start assessing the social outcomes on the ground I chose to go to

Univerisiti Malaya at Kuala Lumpur during the month of December 2006 to conduct the

fieldwork for this study Univerisiti Malaya was a national university with over 30,000

students at undergraduate and graduate levels, spread across different disciplines Besides

pure sciences, a number of students were enrolled at the Faculty of Arts and Social

Sciences, which, obviously, was the focus of my study My fieldwork included collection

of feedback from students as well as instructors at the Faculty of Arts and Social

Sciences, Univerisiti Malaya

Aim This study aimed to develop an understanding of the influence of gender and

ethnicity on the use of ICT among the students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

in Univerisiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur—the capital of Malaysia

Research Questions The general aim of this study as well as a review of available literature presented

in the next chapter led me to the following specific research questions in the context of

Arts and Social Sciences’ students at Univerisiti Malaya:

1 What was the pattern shown by the self-reported use of ICT for academic

purpose, in terms of weekly hours spent on computer for study purposes, across

the students from different ethnic backgrounds?

2 What was the pattern shown by the self-reported use of ICT for academic

purpose, in terms of weekly hours spent on computer for study purposes, across

male and female students?

3 Was there a strong correlation between gender and access, defined by availability

of computer at home as well as university, to ICT?

4 Was there a strong correlation between ethnicity and access, defined by

availability of computer at home as well as university, to ICT?

This study tried to assess the ICT usage patterns in terms of two different groups

(Bumiputra as well as non-Bumiputra, including Chinese and Indians) as well as in terms

of male and female users The analysis of results would then give a clearer picture of how

the government policies and programs eventually translate at the ground In other words,

this would help understand the case of students at an Arts and Social Sciences faculty in

terms of their background and ICT use This study had been perceived as a small step and

tries to supplement earlier research done in the area of gender, ethnicity, and ICT

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE This chapter is divided into two parts The first part involves a review of literature

on the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in higher education,

and also covers some studies done from gender and ethnic perspectives The second part

examines available literature pertaining to the issue of ICT, gender and ethnicity in higher

education in the Malaysian setting

ICT, Gender, and Ethnicity in Higher Education While Oliver (2002) observed that the inclusion and dissemination of ICT in the

field of education was less when compared to other fields, this trend was apparent across

the developing as well as the developed countries as well However, there seemed to be a

considerable amount of research done on the use of ICT in education as far as some of

the developed countries were concerned For instance, Collis & van der Wende (2002)

conducted an international comparative study on the institutional use of ICT in higher

education across Australia, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, UK, and the US

The survey included decision-makers, instructors, and support-staff across the six

developed countries The findings of this study suggested a substantial use of emailing as

well as web-resources as important supplements to classroom teaching However, the

study also found that the changes after the implementation of ICT in higher education

were very slow and not radical While ICTs offered more flexibility, the instructors spent

more time and effort on teaching while using the technology, without any extra incentive

The study found that a major challenge for the governments as well as the educational

institutes was to develop a policy plan aimed at various groups that could potentially

benefit from the technological advancements (Collis & van der Wende, 2002)

The idea of improved flexibility in learning for the students through ICT as well

as the issue of incentive for the teaching staff in incorporating ICT in teaching were also

apparent in another study conducted in UK by Lewis & Goodison (2004) on the

pedagogic use of ICT across 12 institutes during the 1998–2001 period The institutes for

this study were chosen for being examples of “good pedagogic practice in ICT

development and use” identified during 1998-2001 (Lewis & Goodison, 2004, p i)

However, according to this study, the overall staff, especially those with an interest in

ICT, considered ICT to have a positive impact on their teaching The study found that a

notable improvement was in terms of an improved quality of preparation, as “materials

could be easily updated and revised to suit the needs of different student groups” (Lewis

& Goodison, 2004, p iii) While the study presented some evidence of enhancement in

students’ learning in quantitative terms and observations of changes in student behavior,

it also found that it was difficult to observe the improvement in the students’ academic

performance This difficulty was due to limited evaluation as well as the multiplicity of

the pedagogical changes of which ICT was only a part This study included a diverse mix

of disciplines, including Archaeology, Art and Design, Biosciences, Dentistry, Education,

Mathematics, Nursing, Pharmacy, as well as Economics, Classics, Politics, and Sport

Science It appeared that a wide variety of disciplines mentioned here, in part, could

perhaps be one of the reasons behind the problem, raised by Oliver (2002), of an overall

low penetration of ICT in the field of education

In other words, it might be difficult sometimes to have a single approach towards

implementing ICT in higher education across distinct fields, such as Medicine and

Classics And the impracticality of such uniform approach may have led to overall less

penetration of ICT in the education and learning sector Interestingly, though, the

determination in deploying ICT in higher education is evident especially in newly

established institutes As according to the Lewis & Goodison study, out of the 12

participating institutions, “four new universities had adopted a corporate approach to the

promotion of ICT across all subject areas” (2004, p i) Lewis & Goodison (2004) also

provided sufficient food for thought for future research in the area of ICT in higher

education For instance, there was a possibility of detailed research studies focused on a

single discipline in case of most of the previously mentioned disciplines, which were

often not pursued by the researchers studying the impact of ICT in higher education

During the Lewis and Goodison study, some of the teaching staff agreed that ICT

approaches were most appropriate for technical and scientific fields, the results of this

study implied that “arts and humanities were as likely to generate innovative approaches

through their use of new technology as any others” (Lewis & Goodison, 2004, p iii) It is

clearly evident from accounts such as the Lewis and Goodison study that much emphasis

has been given to the incorporation of ICT within mainstream technical disciplines, such

as engineering and pure sciences, as compared to other academic disciplines The study

also raised the issue of students who felt disadvantaged due to limited access to a

computer, especially for the universities that used ICT as a key tool in the teaching

process Thus, issue of ICT access to the students could be another point in question for

future research

On the one hand, the Lewis and Goodison study, while comparing the developed

countries across the western world, suggested that the disciplines like arts and humanities

could also benefit greatly from the advantages of ICT On the other hand, such a thought

was still non-existent across a number of developing countries In Syria, for instance, one

of the key government goals had been to increase the annual numbers of IT and

engineering students by nine and 25 percent respectively (Abdul-Wahed & Al-Awa,

2006) However, there was hardly any evidence of such major initiatives across other

(non-technical) disciplines in Syrian education system Nonetheless, Syria had developed

an emerging system of distance learning called Open Learning System By the year 2005,

at least 87,000 students had benefited from the system, which primarily used ICT to reach

its students (Abdul-Wahed & Al-Awa, 2006)

The challenges for the conventional higher education system in Syria included

poor quality of education, migration or brain-drain, increasing number of higher

education aspirants, conventional education system’s incompatibility with market needs,

low government investment on education, traditional style of teaching, and scores

mattered more than students’ individual preferences The Syrian plan on ICT in higher

education identified ICTs as helpful in several ways, especially in terms of providing

access to a rich source of information in the form of Internet, leading to a

problem-centered and inquiry-based learning process, providing easy access to online material and

to any world-wide e-learning (electronic learning enabled by the ICTs) program,

providing education at lower cost to the government and other donors and increasing the

pool of teachers and students (Abdul-Wahed & Al-Awa, 2006) Although all the above

factors were essentially true in case of e-learning projects, the benefits of ICT in

supplementing the conventional education system (which involved face-to-face learning)

could not be denied For example, Forcier, while discussing one of the many advantages

of computers, had suggested:

The student writing an essay on a computer is at a distinct advantage If you

consider all of the various types of computer software through which the

computer can extend the user’s capability, you see that the use of this tool has a

significant impact (Forcier, 1996, p 301)

This certainly drew attention to the fact that computers and Internet had diverse uses and

were definitely not confined to a small segment of technical students In fact, Forcier’s

conclusion was based on his many years’ experience with using computers in the

American (primary and secondary) education system

Another survey (Levrat, 2002) conducted on the use of ICT in higher education in

Switzerland showed that both tele-teaching and tele-presence were developing fast by the

year 2002 However, the students wanted to use technology to support the existing

“face-to-face courses rather than replace them” (Levrat, 2002) The study also reported that

Geneva had a number of ICT enabled learning projects with many developing countries

at the time The study overall focused on e-learning and had little to say about the use or

role of ICT in the conventional education system Thus, while it seemed that distance

education had greatly benefited from ICT, the conventional (face-to-face) education

system was also making use of ICT, which could be studied from different perspectives,

such as in a developing country setup

A key issue that many developing countries had been facing in deploying ICT in

education was one of infrastructure and access According to UNESCO, in the Asia and

Pacific regions, the:

resources to support higher education are often grossly inadequate, and difficult

policy choices have to be made on priorities between funding significant higher

education expansion in order to student demand and continuing to give basic

education a top priority (UNESCO, 2003, p 18)

At the same time, UNESCO mentioned that the ICTs were impacting education in the

developing world in a major way, especially in terms of “course delivery, learning and

teaching, and management within higher education institutes” (UNESCO, 2003, p 18)

The report, however, also stated that ICT needed to be incorporated into the curriculum

across all areas of higher education Such need had often remained unidentified in the

vast pool of literature on ICT in higher education The report also recommended

contextualization of introduction and development of ICT with respect to national and

local needs (UNESCO, 2003)

Another report by UNESCO (2004, p 5) examined “the opportunities and

challenges posed by globalization to higher education” and explained UNESCO’s stand

that “higher education in a globalized society should assure equity of access and respect

cultural diversity as well as national sovereignty” (UNESCO, 2004, p 5) In order to

assure such equity, it would be important to look into the ethnic dimension of ICT use by

university students, as it could contribute substantially to the understanding of the

phenomenon of globalization of higher education in a multi-cultural society

If the ICT efforts targeted a few specialized fields, then it was quite possible that

there could be an imbalance in the demand-supply chain in the job market According to

UNESCO (2003):

The rapid expansion of higher education in some societies has the unfortunate

effect of increasing graduate unemployment Graduate unemployment is not only

a serious waste of human resource potential, but it can cause social unrest in some

countries in the (Asia and Pacific) region In many cases, graduate unemployment

stems not only from rapid expansion in enrolments but from other factors as labor

market problems and particular disciplinary mixes of graduates (UNESCO, 2003,

p 19)

One way of dealing with such an issue could be opening up of a global work force,

wherein qualified graduates could work in foreign countries In other words, the regions

having a shortage of graduates in a particular field could get them from other countries

However, there would still be a need for some balance across the disciplines, too If all

(or majority of) the students opted for the same discipline, then there was a likelihood of

an unmanageable imbalance in the demand-supply cycle

While there was no dearth of ICT experiments in higher education the world over,

the studies assessing the impact of ICTs on higher education had mostly been conducted

across the developed countries of the Western world For instance, in 2002, a study was

conducted in Glasgow to determine whether the Internet is an aid “or a source of

frustration” for the university students (undergraduate as well as graduate) (Lindsey &

McLaren, 2002, p 115) The results of this study showed that the students in general

found the Internet useful, but the enthusiasm declined with the seniority of students

However, this study was done in 1997-98, when connecting to the Internet was still a

dream for a substantial part of the developing world Since computerization efforts had

been in progress for around a decade in many parts of the world, it was perhaps more

opportune to study the benefits of ICTs in education during the more recent years

Moreover, the Lindsey and McLaren (2002) study included students only from the

Department of Mathematics, Science and Technological Education It was evident that a

common trend in various studies on ICT and computerization in education was to

emphasize the technical fields, but Arts and Social Sciences did not get enough attention

However, it could be argued here that since a society was more likely to be comprised of

different groups with people having diverse interests, it was quite important to see how

each of these groups responded to a change, such as educational reform in the form of

introduction of ICT in this case Thus, there seemed to be a need to focus exclusively on

the students in the discipline of Arts and Social Sciences, who were otherwise less likely

to be included in studies pertaining to ICT in higher education (Lindsey & McLaren,

2000)

The idea of linking computers use with gender was certainly not very new and

there was indeed a wide range of literature available on the subject For instance, a study

done in the United States in 1999 showed that the use of the world wide web and email

was not “significantly different” between male and female university students in the field

of education (Clark & Wiebe, 2001, p 15) While a number of similar studies had been

conducted in the West, there seemed to be a dearth of such studies across most of the

developing world, where the approaches towards the issues of gender and ethnicity were

perhaps quite different as compared to the West

Another study focusing on gender and ICT was published in 2005 depicting the

patterns of ethnicity, age and socioeconomic background influencing the use of

computers among six-month to six-year old children in the US (Calvert et al., 2005) The

study found that at an early age there was no significant difference between boys and

girls in using computers It was only at an older age that girls started showing a little less

interest However, the study did not observe any major gender divide even in the three to

17-year age group Thus, while ethnicity and age made a little difference, the

socio-economic differences influenced the computer usage in a major way (Calvert et al.,

2005)

In terms of studies on ethnicity and ICT, there was a seven-year long research

study was carried out in Israel between 1995 and 2002 This study involved a

questionnaire-based survey on the use of web-based instruction conducted among the

incoming students at the Open University of Israel (Soker, 2005) The results of this

study showed a difference in ICT use across various ethnic groups, but the difference was

not high enough to be considered as substantial Soker (2005) found that although the

numbers of both male and female users had increased the gap in terms of ICT use and

skills across male and female users had remained significant

Some other studies that emphasized on the influence of gender and class

differences on IT in education included Volman & Eck (2001), who reviewed the

findings of several studies on gender and IT in primary and secondary education

conducted during the 1980s and the 1990s Based on various accounts from the early

1990s, Volman & Eck reported that besides social class differences, the ethnic identity

was also a determinant in defining access to computers Following Volman & Eck,

another thorough review of literature on gender, ethnicity and social class was done in

2005 (Heemskerk et al, 2005) The research question was to determine “How and to

what extent do the characteristics of educational ICT tools enhance or inhibit learning for

different groups of students?” (Heemskerk et al, 2005, p 1)

The discussions in this study focused on the course content from an audio-visual, as well

as other perspectives While this study came up with an index of inclusiveness of

educational tools towards the end, the authors accepted that it concerned only the content

and not the context of its use They also pointed out that it was important to look at ICT

applications while they were actually being used (Heemskerk et al, 2005)

ICT, Gender, Ethnicity, and Higher Education in Malaysia Malaysia was one of the few countries to take an early advantage from the

developments in the global IT industry As reported by Raman & Yap (1996), the IT

market in Malaysia grew almost four-fold during the 1980s Around this time, the policy

structure was quite favorable for the growth of the IT sector However, at that point, there

did not seem to be a widespread use of IT in the education sector, except for the technical

courses The MSC initiative launched during the mid-1990s had been directed towards

the global ICT industry and by 2007, the MSC was hosting over 900 multinationals,

foreign-owned, and domestic companies delivering communications and multimedia

products, solutions, services, as well as research and development support (MSC, 2007)

The MSC seemed to provide a favorable environment for a continued growth of the

domestic IT sector as well as the IT exports industry After over a decade of its

implementation, the presence of MSC appeared to have a continued influence on the

reputation of Malaysia as a technology leader in a major way

In the 1980s, Ratnam had argued in the context of technological growth and

industrialization in Malaysia:

Before a country can adapt comfortably to modern technology, it must first

nurture a proper scientific orientation among its citizens Such an orientation must

receive support from a variety of sources, including the mass media, but its

propagation will have to depend heavily on the educational system (Ratnam,

1985, p 51)

The same was perhaps true for deployment of ICT in Malaysia While the

conceptualization of MSC involved seven flagship applications on a nation-wide scale,

which included “Electronic Government (E-Government), Smart Schools, Telemedicine/

Telehealth, Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce), R&D Cluster, E-business, and

Technopreneur Development” (MSC, 2007), there was a felt need to re-conceptualize the

MSC initiative (Kamogawa, 2003) Kamogawa found that while MSC had clearly been

more successful than the strategies of other Southeast Asian countries, such as Thailand’s

IT2010, IT21 in the Philippines, or the Indonesian ICT policy framework, there remained

“some serious challenges to higher education with respect to this success” (Kamogawa,

2003, p 558)

In Malaysia, a high level of enthusiasm in setting goals was evident, but there was

still a long way to go as far as the ongoing ICT projects were concerned (Abdulai, 2001;

Chuan, 2002) For instance, there was a “conscious effort by the authority to train more

Malaysians in the areas of science and technology” (Nordin, 2001, p 15) However, the

increase in the enrollment figures for science and technology had been moderate through

2000 According to Hassan (2001, p 21), the Arts students in Malaysian public

universities consistently formed above 50 percent of the total first degree course

(undergraduate) enrollments between 1995 and 2000 Considering this large student body

in non-technical fields and the MSC policy of incorporating ICT at various levels of

education, it appeared important to see how ICT initiatives have influenced the students

in fields like Arts and Social Sciences

The Malaysian government had started recognizing the importance of improving

the system of education from the early 1980s It was evident that from 1980 to 89, the

share of education in funds allocated for national development increased from 7.5 to 17.2

percent (Raman & Yap, 1996, p 111) However, most of the work done in the area of

developing the education system had arguably been pro-Malay; for instance, the higher

education for Bumiputra (mostly Malays) had been subsidized and they were also entitled

to get funding and scholarships for studying overseas (Hassan, 2001, p 13) It was argued

by many, such as Jomo (1994), that the pro-Malay stance of the policy makers in

Malaysia had made a little impact on overall development of the country

As cautioned by Ratnam during the 1980s, Malaysia was suffering from the threat

of what could be termed a growing “knowledge gap” through the 2000s (Evers, 2003, p

383) The term knowledge gap could be understood as a difference in knowledge between

the socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged people As acknowledged by

many, including the World Bank, there had been an increasing knowledge gap between

nations as well as within the countries, based on regional, class or community-based

differences (Evers, 2003) Evers argued that this gap was a pre-condition to development

and would always exist within as well as across countries He also noted that knowledge

gap was indeed “constructed by experts and organizations” (Evers, 2003, p 396) He saw

education and information rights as key to reducing the knowledge gap It could be

argued that although these two were very important factors, mere freedoms or rights

might not be able to solve the issues of equal access for all unless such rights guaranteed

easy access to all and were supported by the infrastructure However, Evers found that

the knowledge gap was widening even in countries, such as Malaysia where “the

governments have embarked on a vigorous programme of supporting a knowledge-based

economy” (Evers, 2003, p 396) In these countries what became important was

knowledge that was practical and was market-oriented (Chio, 2005) In other words,

knowledge would “now acquire its meaning in relation to the market”, which was a result

of a prominent recent belief that “what is good for the market [or industry] is also good

for the nation” (Chio, 2005, p 127)

Ironically, such faith in markets could not be suitable for a country’s ICT strategy,

especially when the idea was to create a knowledge society (a society based on

knowledge), as Evers had argued that the “devaluation of local knowledge” by the global

experts “as well as marketing strategies of large corporations” were some of the key

reasons behind an increasing knowledge gap around the world (Evers, 2003, p 396) He

suggested that overcoming the problem of an increasing knowledge gap and developing a

competitive edge were possible through “high investments in knowledge production,

dissemination and infrastructure” (Evers, 2003, p 396) Here, the dissemination and

infrastructure would need to be aimed at benefitting the socio-economically

disadvantaged if any substantial change was envisioned

Just like the knowledge gap or the economic development, it was apparent that the

gender development was also highly uneven across different parts of the world For

instance, the education system in Malaysia was reflective of gender segregation across

certain fields Unlike many other developing countries, however, the gender disparity in

enrolments at the higher level of education system in Malaysia was almost non-existent

According to Yong & Ng (1999) as well as Ng & Thambiah (1999, p 88), while the

number of women enrolling in science and technological courses had increased

undeniably during the 1990s, they still constituted 65 percent of the student body in Arts

stream While the whole discussion in both the cases revolved around the female

participation in science and technology courses, there were no reports available on how

the female students in Arts stream were benefiting from the new technology (Ng &

Thambiah, 1999)

Raman & Yap (1996) reported a continued shortage of IT professionals in

Malaysia during the 1990s, and Ng & Thambiah also pointed out that the “high demand

for IT personnel” in the private as well as public sectors during that time led to the

increased interest shown by women in IT education in Singapore as well as in Malaysia

(Ng & Thambiah, 1999, p 90)—something that was reflective of market pressures that

also determined the nature of knowledge (discussed earlier in this section) In fact, Yong

& Ng have also noted:

The entry of women into new technology jobs has been facilitated by the

educational system which has encouraged the development of science and

technology and information technology related academic programs (Yong & Ng,

1999, p 145)

The fact that at least half of the staff at the Computer Science and Information

Technology Faculty at the University of Technology Malaysia in 1992 was female—

indeed showed the outcome of an increased participation of women in technical

education in the form of an improved share for them in the ICT labor market Another

encouraging instance was of Computer and IT related courses at Universiti Utara

Malaysia, where 57 percent teaching staff were women Similarly, the Faculty of IT at

the Univerisiti Malaya had 52 percent female academic staff, during the early-1990s

(Yong & Ng, 1999, p 146)

While the increased number of female students in science and related courses

resulted in increasing the female share to half (or more) of the total enrolments at higher

education institutes in Malaysia during the 1990s, the female share in conventional

engineering courses stayed around 20 percent of the total enrolments in engineering On

the other hand, there was a 51.4 percent female presence in the total enrolment for IT and

related fields in 1990-91 across seven leading universities in Malaysia (Yong & Ng,

1999, p 146) Yong and Ng also noted that the IT courses were popular across the

students irrespective of gender According to a survey (cited by Yong & Ng, 1999, p

146), the Malaysian labor market was estimated to be short of required IT labor during

the mid-1990s by at least 3,224 professionals The discussion led by Yong & Ng led to a

curiosity towards and laid a ground to explore the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in

terms of gender and ICT in the Malaysian context

According to the Seventh Malaysia Plan 1996-2000 (cited in Ng & Thambiah,

1999, p 83), the growth of computer industry was among the fastest in Malaysia during

the 1990s There was almost a two-fold increase in the number of personal computers

that went from 160,000 to 310,000 However, Ng & Thambiah argued that while the IT

use was growing rapidly, neither the government nor the private sector in Malaysia were

making any efforts to assess the impact of IT on work through a gender perspective (Ng

& Thambiah, 1999, p 83) Discussing the labor market trend in the IT sector, Ng &

Thambiah suggested that while there had been an increase in women’s “educational

attainment and the buoyancy of the job market,” the participation of women in the

Malaysian IT job market was still lower than the developed countries (1999, p 86)

On the future of IT and gender, Ng and Thambiah were unclear as to whether or

not the new technology would benefit only certain social groups while marginalizing

others (Ng & Thambiah, 1999) However, they recommend deployment of special efforts

towards ensuring increased female participation in science and technology education

While on the one hand, this might be helpful in addressing the gender issue in

technological fields, it raised another issue of marginalizing non-technological fields,

such as Arts Also, another recommendation was made towards a “gender sensitive

technical training”, but there seemed to be a lack of emphasis on equal distribution of

new technologies across various disciplines, especially the ones that conventionally had a

higher number of women (Ng & Thambiah, 1999, p 97) The authors presented a

different perspective that when compared to many other countries in the developing

world, Malaysia had managed to attain a higher number of female students in technology

courses, which had potentially resulted in an increased number of women in the

technology job sector during the mid and late-1990s However, there was a need to know

whether or not this increase had been uniform across diverse ethnic groups or not In fact,

they later pointed out that “truly comparable cross-cultural statistics and experience”

were lacking because “the interactions of gender, culture and information technology are

very complex” (Ng & Thambiah, 1999, p 102) They also felt a serious need for

assessing advantages and disadvantages of IT (Ng & Thambiah, 1999, p 103)

In the years after 2000, the focus was not on the IT sector alone anymore and the

service sector had also started benefiting from the ICT developments As Ng & Mitter

discussed the case of call center workers in India and Malaysia, they concluded:

After all, in the New Economy, the question of gender and class inequalities

remains just as valid in assessing sustainability, replicability, and indigenization

of best practices, as they were in the Old Economy (Ng & Mitter, 2005, p 156)

It was noteworthy that ICT had enabled women in Malaysia to take up home-based work

For instance, e-Homemakers network in Malaysia targeted women from low-income

bracket and provided them with opportunity to work from home (Huyer, 2006) However,

Huyer also pointed out that “the strategic framework for ICT development” used by

governments and policy-makers across Malaysia, India as well as the Philippines was

“silent on gender issues and considerations” (Huyer, 2006, p 28) A similar concern was

echoed by Kamogawa (2003), who conducted a research in Malaysia to identify the

issues and challenges in higher education reform The study had three main objectives:

first, to determine how Malaysian higher-educational policies have changed by

looking at socioeconomic backgrounds; second, to examine case studies of the

Malaysia Multimedia University (MMU), Malaysia National University (UKM),

and University Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas); and third, to discuss whether ICT is

affecting access and course selection in higher education in terms of gender

equality (Kamogawa, 2003, p 545)

As the goals suggested, the focus of Kamogawa’s research largely remained on

technical education, distance learning, and gender equality in education Kamogawa’s

discussion of gender primarily revolved around the enrollment of females in technical

fields and their employment in the ICT jobs, which provided a wide scope for a future

inquiry focused on Arts and Social Sciences students A key aspect lacking in

Kamogawa’s research was one of ethnicity Likewise, it could be argued that while

Kamogawa’s study showed low female participation in the field of technical education,

the results did not imply that the female students, overall (including other disciplines such

as Arts and Social Sciences), were avoiding the use of the available technology in their